I completely agree. This is what I wrote on Reddit in response to Klabnik's post:
Rust can make such an important contribution to such an important slice of the software world, that I really fear that trying to make a better pitch and get as many adopters as quickly as possible might create a community that would pull Rust in directions that would make it less useful, not more.
Current C/C++ developers really do need more safety. They don't need a more pleasant language. Non C/C++ developers don't really need a language with no GC. Now, by "don't need" I absolutely don't mean "won't benefit from". But one of the things we can learn from James Gosling about language design is, don't focus on features that are useful; don't even focus on features that are very useful; focus on features that are absolutely indispensable... and compromise on all the rest. The people behind Java were mostly Lispers, but they came to the conclusion that what the industry really, really needs, is garbage collection and good dynamic linking and that those have a bigger impact than clever language design, so they put all that in the VM and wrapped it in a language that they made as familiar and as non-threatening as possible, which even meant adopting features from C/C++ that they knew were wrong (fall-through in switch/case, automatic numeric widening), all so they could lower the language adoption cost, and sell people the really revolutionary stuff in the VM. Gosling said, "we sold them a wolf in sheep's clothing". I would recommend watching the first ~25 minutes of this talk[1] to anyone who's interested in marketing and maintaining a programming language.
If Rust would only win over 10% of C/C++ programmers who today understand the need for safety, say, in the next 5-10 years, that would make it the highest-impact, most important language of the past two decades. In that area of the software world change is very, very slow, and you must be patient, but that's where Rust could make the biggest difference because that's where its safety is indispensable. A few articles on Rust in some ancient trade journals that you thought nobody reads because those who do aren't on Twitter and aren't in your circle may do you more good than a vigorous discussion on Reddit or the front page of HN. Even the organizational structure in organizations that need Rust looks very different from the one in companies that are better represented on Reddit/HN, so you may need to market to a different kind of people. So please, be patient and focus your marketing on those that really need Rust, not on those outside that group you think you can win over most quickly because they move at a faster pace.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq2WQuWVrgQ